Arrow Gruts bring their own particular flavor of important and subtle positioning decisions. I consider playing them basically every year (along with TKN, and 'trons, and my usual blended armies) but the only year I did is the only year I didn't make semis, so I manage to talk myself out of it.

All in favor of me returning to the main event next year to keep
@dok
out, say 'aye'.

He made top 8, but I'm not sure if you're making statements about that.

He beat me in the first round, when I brought 3x Romans, Marcus, Valgard, NGS, Isamu... I think. My first and only foray into day 2 RtW. Far cry from the Raelin + Greenscales army I ran before, but still too strong for RtW it seemed.

RtW is hard to wrap my head around; this is a nice primer. It seems like you wanna go 3-0 with the worst army you can get away with, although to hit day 2 as consistently as some of you do, that's probably not the case. I'd like AG's plus Krug, but that's probably too strong?

Maybe I can get in a tourney or two next year.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fomox

(I've also played many matches with great, fun people who were using Q9. So using Q9 doesn't make you a tool. But being a tool sure seems to make you use Q9.)

RtW is hard to wrap my head around; this is a nice primer. It seems like you wanna go 3-0 with the worst army you can get away with, although to hit day 2 as consistently as some of you do, that's probably not the case.

I don't think the current format really rewards skirting the bottom edge any more than it rewards skirting the top edge. I think you pretty much want to fly in the middle of the meta and try to eke out your games.

Still, it takes a good heaping of matchup luck. That's just the nature of the format. Making semifinals 8/9 years is IMO my most exceptional Heroscape achievement, but there's been a lot of luck along the way to keep that going.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jexik

I'd like AG's plus Krug, but that's probably too strong?

Maybe, but I don't think so. There was a huge range in army power this year. I think the new alternating format has both increased the variance in armies and slightly ratcheted up the average.

I strongly considered Raelin, AG x3, Swog x4, Nerak, Krug, Marcu. I'm playing it in the online event and I'm 2-0 with it and 1-0 against it, so there's that. As I mentioned earlier I've considered AGs every year for the last 7 years but usually talk myself out of it.

The biggest issue for AGs in my mind is they are probably more map and matchup dependent than most armies. On the flip side, though, they are very hard to play for the uninitiated.

This is the freshest archetype in the main event and leads to some interesting armies & games. Splashing refers to the usage of single common squads, but splash armies typically feature low numbers of other common squads in addition to the inclusion of single commons. Raelin usually finds a way in there too. AFAIK, the term & main event usage was pioneered by the infectedsloth group. In 2014 at a 425 point total, Major Q23 brought 1x Mezzos as cleanup in his Dwarf army that he took to Day 2, as the beginnings of the splash concept. Splashing had its first resounding success last year, with infectedsloth taking a pure splash army to the Main Event finals, and some other splash armies finding success.

The army functions in similar ways to jexik's "A+ junk" archetype, but the junk isn't A+ anymore. They are usually hard to order marker manage and threat sequence. Now that the roulette wheel has become weak enough to allow for these armies to be played, I expect them to continue to find success.

Bread AND Butter

Spoiler Alert!

This concept doesn't really need a name, and it's mostly only been used to success by dok. I think it's more accessible to the general public than Splash armies are though. Instead of traditional army structure of one coherent whole with filler, these armies have one melee part and one ranged part.

Where Splash armies rewards long term game plans and using all of the different pieces in your army well, these armies reward short term flexibility and responding to how well your figures are surviving. I think people shy away from these armies because they are a bit boring to come up with (it's not interesting to see the pieces of your army as melee and range, usually we want a unified army concept), but they are good. You can tune the army to pretty much any meta strength, because there are lots of ranged and melee squads.

I think there's a bit of a continuum between these two styles, at least given the way I think about them. When I think about the armies I make that you're classing as "Bread AND Butter", I'm thinking not just as "melee and range", but more as "let me have figures with interacting roles such that there are at least two places to put OMs during the meat of the game, and force the player to make good decisions on pingponging between the two". Which, granted, you summarized nicely in your description. But I think this sort of thinking is similar (not the same, but similar) to the splash concept of "add complexity to the build by forcing the player to manage a bunch of small pieces".

Really, when you compare Q23's 2014 army or even vegiedad's 2017 army to my 2016 army, the main difference is that my ranged squad has multiples. It's really not night and day. When you look at something like Q23's 2017 or 2018 builds there's additional stuff thrown in that doesn't have as clear a role; it's more adding complexity for the sake of making it harder to pilot. But, as I said at the start, it's a continuum.

I guess you could even extend it past that, and say there's a spectrum from "Uniques Mostly" to "Bread AND Butter", with "Splash" in the middle.

This is the freshest archetype in the main event and leads to some interesting armies & games. Splashing refers to the usage of single common squads, but splash armies typically feature low numbers of other common squads in addition to the inclusion of single commons. Raelin usually finds a way in there too. AFAIK, the term & main event usage was pioneered by the infectedsloth group. In 2014 at a 425 point total, Major Q23 brought 1x Mezzos as cleanup in his Dwarf army that he took to Day 2, as the beginnings of the splash concept. Splashing had its first resounding success last year, with infectedsloth taking a pure splash army to the Main Event finals, and some other splash armies finding success.

The army functions in similar ways to jexik's "A+ junk" archetype, but the junk isn't A+ anymore. They are usually hard to order marker manage and threat sequence. Now that the roulette wheel has become weak enough to allow for these armies to be played, I expect them to continue to find success.

Bread AND Butter

Spoiler Alert!

This concept doesn't really need a name, and it's mostly only been used to success by dok. I think it's more accessible to the general public than Splash armies are though. Instead of traditional army structure of one coherent whole with filler, these armies have one melee part and one ranged part.

Where Splash armies rewards long term game plans and using all of the different pieces in your army well, these armies reward short term flexibility and responding to how well your figures are surviving. I think people shy away from these armies because they are a bit boring to come up with (it's not interesting to see the pieces of your army as melee and range, usually we want a unified army concept), but they are good. You can tune the army to pretty much any meta strength, because there are lots of ranged and melee squads.

I think there's a bit of a continuum between these two styles, at least given the way I think about them. When I think about the armies I make that you're classing as "Bread AND Butter", I'm thinking not just as "melee and range", but more as "let me have figures with interacting roles such that there are at least two places to put OMs during the meat of the game, and force the player to make good decisions on pingponging between the two". Which, granted, you summarized nicely in your description. But I think this sort of thinking is similar (not the same, but similar) to the splash concept of "add complexity to the build by forcing the player to manage a bunch of small pieces".

Really, when you compare Q23's 2014 army or even vegiedad's 2017 army to my 2016 army, the main difference is that my ranged squad has multiples. It's really not night and day. When you look at something like Q23's 2017 or 2018 builds there's additional stuff thrown in that doesn't have as clear a role; it's more adding complexity for the sake of making it harder to pilot. But, as I said at the start, it's a continuum.

I guess you could even extend it past that, and say there's a spectrum from "Uniques Mostly" to "Bread AND Butter", with "Splash" in the middle.

Some thoughts:
1. Major Q23's 2014 is not a splash army. I like it and still talk about it because it was the first time I saw 1x Mezzos used in a major tournament, but that does not make it a splash army.

Can't remember the specifics of Nathan's but I believe it involved 1x Knights of Weston, Alastair, Finn, Tarn?

3. The way we generally think about Splash armies is no more than 150 points or 9 figures of anything.

4. Just because an army fits this definition doesn't make it Splash. A true Splash army imo fills in at least 3-4 of the main roles in a Splash army. Sounds like I should write and post my "How to Build a Splash Army" guide sometime...

RtW is hard to wrap my head around; this is a nice primer. It seems like you wanna go 3-0 with the worst army you can get away with, although to hit day 2 as consistently as some of you do, that's probably not the case. I'd like AG's plus Krug, but that's probably too strong?

I don't think it's near as difficult as everybody makes it out to be. Bring something that you can manage well and something that you think others will struggle to manage.

Now, what you manage and what you force others to manage, that can be quite interesting.

RtW is hard to wrap my head around; this is a nice primer. It seems like you wanna go 3-0 with the worst army you can get away with, although to hit day 2 as consistently as some of you do, that's probably not the case. I'd like AG's plus Krug, but that's probably too strong?

I don't think it's near as difficult as everybody makes it out to be. Bring something that you can manage well and something that you think others will struggle to manage.

Now, what you manage and what you force others to manage, that can be quite interesting.

It's actually kinda true, we probably overcomplicate things slightly. That said, I was able to go 3-0 in RtW rounds against my army because my opponents weren't able to leverage the weapons in my Toolbox to their maximum potential. I was also able to win two of my games with my army (including vs. a strong player The Orange Mailman using 4x Mezzos and Nilfheim). I lost to Dok in a game that I was able to at least keep close and perhaps could have won but for a round in which I mismanaged 2 of 3 OMs. I needed some good dice and for Dok to have some bad dice and it happened, but I just wasn't able to close it (managed to kill Torky and the Grubs though). Other loss was to Nick running 4x Stingers and Braxas; I had tools to kill them but not quite enough, was able to kill Braxas and 7 Stingers. Could have won with a stronger army, but definitely not at least one of the RtW rounds.

It's actually one of the reasons I like events that require my opponents to play with my stuff. There's very little I don't feel comfortable playing and I can usually create something janky enough that it'll give others issues. I know that allowed me to win two of my reverse games. I don't really know exactly how I'd classify my armies since my typical army building procedures tend to start with a unit and then try to make an army that'll work.

~Dysole, who needs to go write her battle reports

This sentence has exactly seven words.
This sentence doesn't have exactly seven words.

This whole article is definitely biased to my own experiences, and since I played against Major Q23's army in 2014, and designed vegie dad's 2017 army, those are probably a bit forced into the Splash category. To me, Splash armies should have more than two options for sure.

I think 150 points in one thing is a good rule for Splash army; my goal for this year with my Knights x1/Alastair + Tagawa Samurai Archers x2 was to make an army that looked like Splash but was actually a "Bread and Butter" army. Knights and Alastair is good.